The present disclosure relates to a technique for conducting a financial transaction at a point-of-sale terminal.
The popularity and functionality of portable electronic devices has resulted in their use in an increasing variety of applications. For example, developers are investigating the use of cellular telephones to conduct financial transactions at point-of-sale terminals, such as cash registers.
Some proposals for these financial transactions (which are sometimes referred to as ‘mobile payments’) involve using a cellular telephone to provide financial information (such as financial information that is usually contained in a barcode or a magnetic stripe of a debit or credit card) directly to a point-of-sale terminal via an existing peripheral device that is coupled to the point-of-sale terminal, such as a barcode scanner or a magnetic-stripe reader. However, these approaches can significantly constrain the interaction with the customer during the mobile-payment process, which may hinder adoption of mobile payments.
Alternatively, in other proposals mobile-payments are implemented by changing existing point-of-sale-terminal hardware and/or software. However, these changes will significantly increase the cost and complexity of implementing mobile payments, and therefore may also restrict adoption of mobile payments.